Quotes from Shana Abé

Mrs. Westcliffe, our headmistress, had a ramrod spine and ebony hair and lips that could pinch off her words with such knife-edged clarity you wondered that you didn't bleed to death from a mere, "Good morning.

There are things in this world, she said steadily, still holding Zane's eyes, that defy easy words. There are things in this world worth protecting, fragile things, secret things. Things that would do great harm should they ever be handled carelessly. Rue. The marquess loomed just beyond her. Things like magic. She touched a finger to Zane's cheek, a shock of warmth. Things like love. -Rue, Zane, & Kit

But if—when—those things happen, I would not have you be cruel in return. Kinder hearts are stronger, I think.

handsome was merely a mask over a truth, like spectacles. And the truth was always more interesting than anything else.

It is the nature of our lives, Madeleine. If you dance in the limelight, it's only natural that people will look at you. You can't expect otherwise.

I mean for you to know, in every motherly way that I can convey it, that your parents were in love. That we were twin spirits in love. And how special you were to us from the very beginning, the spark born from us both.

Because love is a tremendous gift, Maddy. A gift and a burden. Marriage especially is more than just hope and luck and a handshake. Marriage is work, enormous work, because it's a living entity that needs everlasting attention. It will push you and bend you and test you, and if you're not prepared for any of that, it will shatter you. I imagine the colonel could tell you something about what that's like.

I told him that I would not marry him, because we were too young, and I didn't want to fall in love with the idea of love. I wanted actual love, not a looking-glass reflection of it. Not stolen kisses, or sotted promises. I wanted the truth of love, the pure molten core of it, because anything short of that was just a cheat.

She was Ophelia—tragic, bereft Ophelia—and had practiced singing her mad, sad lines until her voice had gone hoarse and she'd had to rest it for two days just to speak again without a rasp.

Although Madeleine's happiness was palatable, Jack's was even more

It's going to be this way, you know. Forever and a day, we'll be watched and followed, studied and analyzed. I fear you'll know no peace with me." "Peace," she scoffed, light—but her heart was pounding, fierce and strong. "What a tedious notion. Who requires peace, when one may have Colonel Jack Astor?

It can be difficult sometimes for our families to accept us as people separate from who they are. As separate souls. When we're young, we're taught to behave as our parents do—to cherish what they cherish and believe what they believe. And for a while, that's as it should be. But as adults, sometimes we have our own desires, our own hopes, that are at odds with how our parents view the world.

The best memory I have about Titanic was that she was so large. So epic. I never felt any swaying or bobbing or turbulence to interfere with my meals, my sensitive appetite, or my slumber. I never felt any sort of vulnerability aboard that ocean liner, right up until the very end. I imagine that's a blessing, don't you? Whoever wants to know how it's all going to end before it actually does? Only poets and madmen, I would think.

The black thing inside her enlarged, choking, closing her throat. She turned back to Jack.

Because love is a tremendous gift, Maddy. A gift and a burden. Marriage especially is more than just hope and luck and a handshake. Marriage is work, enormous work, because it's a living entity that needs everlasting attention.

She had been, in short, the inevitable result of everything she had been raised to be, frothy and naïve, a girl with barely a notion of her own universe, its rights and its monstrous wrongs.

There are certain moments in life when hard, hot truth shines at you like a spotlight from heaven, like the focused beam from a lighthouse on the shore of yourself, and you find yourself stripped naked in its light. You can't hide from it. You can't close your eyes and wish it away. It's truth; easy truth or unbearable truth, either way, it won't be vanquished. And there you are for all to see, stuck in its merciless glare.

Kinder hearts are stronger, I think.

It can be difficult sometimes for our families to accept us as people separate from who they are. As separate souls. When we're young, we're taught to behave as our parents do—to cherish what they cherish and believe what they believe. And for a while, that's as it should be. But as adults, sometimes we have our own desires, our own hopes, that are at odds with how our parents view the world." "Is

Kinder hearts are stronger, her mother had once

he wanted to and she wanted him to, whether she fully realized it yet or not.

When we're young, we're taught to behave as our parents do—to cherish what they cherish and believe what they believe. And for a while, that's as it should be. But as adults, sometimes we have our own desires, our own hopes, that are at odds with how our parents view the world.

All three of us together, locked in love for that blink of a moment in time.

Whoever wants to know how it's all going to end before it actually does? Only poets and madmen, I would think.